Australia Says It Will Join Airstrikes Against Islamic State in Iraq

SYDNEY, Australia — Australia will join the United States and its allies in launching airstrikes in Iraq against Islamic State militants in the coming days, Prime Minister Tony Abbott said Friday.

Mr. Abbott also said that special operations personnel would join American, Canadian and British counterparts on the ground in Iraq to advise and assist the Iraqi military. He ruled out joining the American-led coalition’s airstrikes in Syria for the time being.

Speaking at a news conference in Canberra, the Australian capital, Mr. Abbott said the deployment could be lengthy, “certainly months rather than weeks.”

“I want to reassure the Australian people that it will be as long as it needs to be, but as short as it possibly can be,” he said.

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Prime Minister Tony Abbott, right, with the chief of the Defense Force, Air Chief Marshal Mark Binskin, during a news conference in Canberra on Friday.CreditAlan Porritt/European Pressphoto Agency

Mr. Abbott spoke after Australia’s National Security Committee and its full cabinet met early Friday. Mr. Abbott said Australia would join the airstrikes at the request of the Iraqi government but was still awaiting final legal agreements with Iraq covering the deployment of special operations personnel on the ground. Those agreements were likely to be finalized within 24 hours, he said.

Mr. Abbott has been vocal about what he says is the need to fight the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, in the Middle East and in Australia, where he says the militant group has ordered followers to commit murders in public. Intelligence officials here say that about 70 Australians have joined the group in the Middle East.

On Wednesday, the country’s Parliament passed legislation urged by Mr. Abbott that would expand telecommunications surveillance and the police’s power to detain suspects, as well as subject journalists to possible prison terms for unauthorized reporting on intelligence matters.

Bill Shorten, leader of the opposition Labor Party, supported the deployment announced Friday, calling it “a sensible decision in a most difficult set of circumstances.” But a senator with the Greens party, Christine Milne, criticized what she called Mr. Abbott’s “rush into another U.S.-led, multiyear war in Iraq.”

Australia has already sent several military planes and hundreds of personnel to the Middle East in anticipation of joining the campaign against the Islamic State, and this week it said the air force had completed its first support mission over Iraq. On Friday, the chief of the Defense Force, Air Chief Marshal Mark Binskin, said that six F/A-18F Super Hornet fighters were in the region ready to strike and that two more could be called upon if needed.

A Royal Australian Air Force C-130 Hercules and a C-17A Globemaster aircraft have been deployed to provide humanitarian aid to Iraqi citizens. In August, Australia sent planeloads of light arms to help Kurdish fighters against the Islamic State. Australian forces have been stationed at Al Minhad Air Base in the United Arab Emirates.

While quick to deploy its forces, Australia has awaited formal sanction from the newly formed Iraqi government before joining bombing campaigns, Foreign Minister Julie Bishop and Mr. Abbott have said.

“It has been a bit like the ‘coalition of the waiting,’” said Peter Jennings, a former deputy secretary for strategy in the Australian Department of Defense and executive director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, a research institute.

Rodger Shanahan, visiting fellow at the Lowy Institute for International Policy, said that despite criticism in Australia that Mr. Abbott had rushed troops to the region, doing so allowed Australia to determine its role within the coalition. Mr. Shanahan, a veteran of the war in Afghanistan, said the use of early-warning and intelligence-gathering aircraft in Australia’s first sortie over Iraq was a significant contribution.

Australia has fought alongside the United States in several major wars, and Mr. Abbott, like previous leaders, regards the alliance as crucial to regional security. The previous Labor government agreed in 2011 to increase to 2,500 the number of United States Marines stationed in Darwin, in far northern Australia.